Dangerous
by GothamDark90
Summary: Companion piece to "Just find her." Selina Kyle is seeing a pattern. And she doesn't like it at all. Takes place two years after the first season.


Disclaimer: own nothing

Summary: Companion piece to "Just find her." Selina Kyle is seeing a pattern. And she doesn't like it at all. Takes place two years after the first season.

**Dangerous: **

She leapt from rooftop to rooftop. An uncaring, wild cat in a jungle of primitive hate, violence, gang war, drugs and deceit. In this city, the one without weakness, without a heart was the one that survived the longest. That was the rule.

She glanced chillingly down at the rabble below. Flocks of sheep too stupid to realize how to live in this world. She had no concern for them. Even as she leapt a few more buildings and stopped scowling at the people on the ground, she knew her jaded views weren't dissuading her repudiation. She should forget her lies, at least the lies she was telling herself, considering she was deliberately going to the hospital.

She wondered to herself again and again why she kept doing this, why she kept going back to _them,_ back to _him._ She scowled at the large hospital building she was gradually approaching. She was beginning to see a pattern here. She was dangerous. She knew that. If anyone wanted proof of what she was willing to do to survive, all they had to do was look at the photos at the crime scene of when those child snatchers were busted two years ago. All one had to do was look at the photograph of one of the child snatchers' guards' eyes. Or, lack of eyes. She didn't give a second thought about gouging out the eyes of someone that would try to grab her and cage her, and would mutilate and maim as she pleased, should anyone try to endanger her freedom.

That should be no different now…...but it was.

She may still be dangerous, but her pattern of getting away from cages and people that would otherwise try to keep her from leaving had…...altered.

She didn't know when the realization had registered. She knew she didn't have as much control as she used to. However, the hate she wished she could gather up as a defense against the plague of thoughts whenever she contemplated "weakness," would never have the fire she wished she could have, like she used to possess.

Things had been very simple once. Only two years ago, actually. When she had been thirteen, before she met Jim Gordon, before she met Bruce Wayne, before she met Barbara Kean, before she met Renee Montoya, things had been blissfully simple. Well, as much as they could be on the streets of Gotham.

Her life had been dangerous, it incessantly was. Thieves, murderers, thugs, drug dealers, and yes, worse. Especially those that preyed on women and children. She had evaded every last one of them and had survived some (she'd rather not think about the ones she survived).

But at least in this city, without a haven to run to, she knew what she was getting. But she couldn't say that anymore. She had been able to rely only on herself. She hadn't been able to say that either in quite a while. Only two years, but it felt like a century ago when she once was free of ties to weaknesses. She was fifteen now. Only two years, and she had lost everything.

If she could come up with one thing she wished that had happened, it was that she had not been there that day when the cops had come in, doing a raid and pulling her and a bunch of other kids out after the child snatchers incident. If she hadn't then maybe she wouldn't have first really made an impression on Jim Gordon.

This would be where she drew the line. It had to be. There was nothing more these people could take from her. There just _couldn't_ be any more. Her strength, her dignity, her independence…...

That…..._that _was the thing that was unforgivable; her independence. She had never had what one might call a good, structured life, but she at least knew what she'd be waking up to the next morning, even if it _was _hell. She had the strength to bear with it too. But trusting someone else. Confiding in someone else. _Relying _on someone else…that was truly unforgivable.

When Barbara bandaged up her bleeding arm, put cotton balls slathered with anti-bacterial alcohol to her cuts with such gentle precision that Selina had almost collapsed onto the couch, helpless to the woman's care, that's when the warning signs should have been obvious. When she'd genuinely laugh at some silly little gesture Bruce did by accident when he tried to be charming, that was when the signs should have been clear. She had always shunned people who treated her as if she were an invalid. Spurned offerings of help. Though she would tell anyone who asked that those offerings of help usually were masks for an ulterior motive. It had taken three horrifying years on the streets for Selina to learn that and another four years to take those lessons and put them to good use in the art of survival.

You think she'd have ingrained those lessons into her psyche; that those years of blood, tears, betrayals, greed, ruthless instinct and lies had taught her what she needed to know about the world and shouldn't trust another living soul. That lesson was kind of hard to abide by when there was someone ignoring your refusals and attending to your needs when you could barely stand with near starvation and injuries.

Stealing from hot dog and other food vendors was easy, but breaking in to steal money and food from well-secured houses was quite different, even for a seasoned thief like her. It didn't always turn out in her favor and food wasn't always guaranteed the next day. The regular schedule usually ended with her eating at least six times a week (if she was lucky), and possibly one meal a day. So if anyone wondered why she was small and thin for her age, smaller and thinner than she should have been, there was the answer.

But it was when Gordon had been shot in the line of duty and screams tore from her young mouth of denial, "He's not dead! He's not dead!" when she had arrived at the hospital and saw Barbara, Renee, Allen and Bullock leaning over a wounded Jim Gordon on the gurney, that she understood the extent of how little independence she had left.

It wasn't as if she had never come to care about anyone that wasn't Jim, Barbara Renee and Bruce before. She could dissent her actions towards Ivy but she probably had come to understand better by now. Ivy hadn't been the only one either. She had helped other kids in the past as well, against her stronger and better instincts. But she had never fooled herself into thinking that they would do the same for her. She knew that the first chance they got, they would sell her out to get the advantage. The rule of survival was trust no one, and believe that anyone was capable of selling you out. But that was where things got dangerous. She somehow had forgotten that Barbara, Gordon, Montoya and Bruce were subjects of those suspicions as well, that they were just as capable of hurting her as anyone else was.

Dangerous…...Barbara, Jim, Renee, and Bruce were dangerous people, almost as dangerous as those damn child snatchers that had tried to get her twice before she first personally spoke to the noble white knight of Gotham, Gordon himself.

There was a difference. Those two scumbags…..the ones that always smiled and were polite, the young thief always knew there was something wrong about them, just by looking at them, just by looking at those big creepy smiles and cold vacant eyes they had, long before they injected the other kids in that alley with whatever that thing had been. Jim, Barbara, Renee and Bruce were dangerous, because she just couldn't tell what their motives were. They hadn't betrayed her…...yet. They hadn't hurt her…...yet. They hadn't told her any blatant lies…...yet.

But there was always that risk. Always. She didn't know what they gained with having her around, but they acted like they cared about her. That wasn't the problem though. The problem was that she believed them.

And that day, watching the doctors rush to Gordon's side, pulling the curtain and blocking them as they began operation, being forced to stay away from the scene by Barbara and Montoya, each of their hands on her shoulders, restraining her, and young Bruce Wayne who had come to see if Gordon was alright went up to her and told her it was going to be alright, probably trying to convince himself more than her, the increasing racing of her heartbeat, the panting breaths, the sting of tears at her eyes spoke as terrible warnings to her.

The bullet hit Jim on the right side of his chest, not his left. Not where his heart was and it hadn't hit any major arteries. The medics had gotten to him just before any infections or major blood loss had occurred. The relieved hysterical laugh that almost burst from Selina when she heard that was also a giant warning sign. Even worse, when Barbara leaned down, embracing Selina, holding her close, the initial compulsion to struggle away from the woman didn't rise in her, instead, she leaned into the blonde's warmth. And after when the doctor told them that Gordon should in theory be alright and Bruce turned around to look at her, grinning, holding her hand and giving it a comforting squeeze, she didn't pull away, it should have been obvious. After that day, when Gordon was held at the hospital for recovery from his surgery and Barbara had offered to take care of her, Selina had just hung out on the roof of the hospital, contemplating what she heard.

Barbara, Montoya, Bruce, Jim Gordon…...they were all dangerous. More dangerous than anyone on the street with a gun or knife that Selina ran into. More dangerous than any crime lord. She knew at least to stay away from those types of people.

The four of them; they were dangerous because she trusted them. They had power over her. She wondered how long it would be before they realized just how much power they had over her. When that question popped up in her mind, a frisson of fear lanced through her and a baleful sense of cold overtook her.

Yes….how long would it be before Gordon or Barbara or Montoya or Bruce figured out just how much of a hold on her they had? She was terrified of the day when that would happen. And even as she closed in on the building she had somehow not realized she was going to, the one she had subconsciously traveled to, to where the wounded knight of this city was, she knew she was going through this pattern again, and she knew soon that whatever strength she had to hold onto her freedom may soon waver. She saw this pattern for what it was, and she didn't like it at all.


End file.
